


a thousand miles down to the sea

by RonnieMinor



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Childhood, Drowning, Introspection, M/M, Memories, Near Death Experience, Water, past history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 22:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonnieMinor/pseuds/RonnieMinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life for a life, a debt owed and a debt paid. It all comes back to the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a thousand miles down to the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired/titled by Florence + the Machine's 'Never Let Me Go'.
> 
> Set in S2, but divergent from the canon for the most part. References 2x04 and 2x10 in particular.

Derek is twelve and he’s on holiday with his family. He’s twelve and by now, old enough to complain vocally about being forced to go on holiday with his _whole_ family _every single year_. He’s twelve, and in less than six months, he’ll be thirteen and finally, _finally_ old enough to shift for the first time. For now he’s got nothing more than a temper that’s hard as hell to keep in check, eyes glow bright blue from time to time, and supernaturally heightened senses and strength. He’s (secretly) counting the days until his birthday. 

What all this adds up to is having a row with his sister (Laura, fourteen, stronger, smarter and a total bitch when she wants to be), mouthing off to his mother and being cowed into submission by his father, the Alpha. Uncle Peter tries to be sympathetic, but Derek isn’t in the mood to hear it, instead running off as soon as possible. His feet are bare against the dirt, slap, slap, slapping against the ground as he runs. His heart beats loud in his chest, his blood thudding in his veins. His face is set in a scowl, the injustice of the world and older sisters making the line of his shoulders tense and hard. The anger sings under his skin and so he runs, feet pounding against earth that turns to stone as he winds his way down the hill. 

He’s lost to all but himself when he hears a cry on the wind. Skidding to a halt, he wills his pulse to slow, his racing heart settling into a calmer rhythm as he breathes. Then he stills, focussing every fibre of his being on listening. He’s straining to hear beyond the sounds of the wind, the sea and the screaming gulls when he hears it again. A high-pitched call, full of fear. His feet skid on the stone as he pushes off, running full tilt in the direction of the noise. 

It takes him a couple of minutes to get to the source, the move from stone to sand slowing his pace. There’s a very slight burn in his legs from the exertion, but he’s barely out of breath as he stares out at the sea, and the child clinging to the rocks. How the boy got out there is a mystery – on his own, he’s too small to have clambered out that far – but one way or another, he’s ended up in the sea, arms wrapped around a rock, eyes wide with fear. With every wave he’s pushed against the rock and then pulled away from it. It’s clear that he won’t be able to hold on forever. 

As soon as he catches sight of Derek, the boy starts shouting, ‘Help! Help me! Please!’ He keeps up an insistent chorus until a particularly big wave crashes over him, silencing his cries. Derek feels an irrational sense of relief when he sees that the boy’s still there once the wave passes. And in that moment, he knows there’s no way he can stand here and do nothing. 

‘Hold on!’ he calls. ‘I’m coming to get you!’ Then he sets off across the rocks, all thoughts about not drawing attention to himself with his ‘abilities’ cast aside in the face of the fierce _need_ to save this boy, who’s still hanging on to the rock, shouting out encouragement and warnings. 

He’s five feet away, something like complacency settling in his veins when three _huge_ waves fall one, two, three in rapid succession. Derek watches in horror as the boy makes it through the first two, but is pulled off the rock on the third. Somewhere, distantly, he knows he’s shouting, but in that moment all he can sees is the boy’s wide eyes, his arms thrown out wide as he’s cast backwards into the sea. Derek stumbles to a halt, caught in shock, his eyes fixed on the child’s. 

‘ _Help_!’ the boy calls, his voice high and reedy, terror resonating through it. It startles Derek into action again, his feet slipping on wet rock as he shoves off, racing, racing towards the boy. He takes all of an instant to assess the sea before he’s diving off the rocks into the water, splitting the surf in a dive that would make the school swim coach weep tears of joy. He breaks the surface moments later, gasping in shock at the water, which is bone-achingly cold. He resists the urge to push his fringe out of his eyes, instead putting his effort into keeping himself off the rocks and looking for the child. 

His stomach sinks when he sees a limp body pushing against the rocks with each new wave that breaks. Fighting off the cold that threatens to shut down both his brain and his body, he swims against the tide, putting every ounce of his strength into reaching the boy. As soon as he gets his arms around the small body, he reaches out for the nearest rock, ignoring the barnacles that rip into his hand. Then, somehow, he manages to get the boy out of the water, taking a scant moment to catch his breath before he picks the boy up and heads back across the rocks to the shore, his heart practically beating out of his chest. 

As soon as he gets to the sand, he lays the boy down, checking frantically for some sign of a pulse. He finds none, though he can hear the barest echo of a heartbeat. 

His brain scrambles for something, _something_ , before turning up a memory of watching a doctor on tv pumping the blood round a patient’s body and blowing air into their lungs. Trying to remember what the doctor had done, he locks his hands together, pressing down hard on the boy’s chest. A trickle of water comes out of the boy’s mouth and Derek feels cold inside, the sun hot against his skin as he works. 

He can only manage a few presses before his arms begin to burn, so he swaps and pushes his mouth against the boy’s, pinching his nose shut like the doctor had done and blowing air into the boy’s mouth. He’s only done it a couple of times when the boy splutters back into consciousness, long-lashed eyes blinking against the sun. Derek helps him sit up, supporting him as he coughs up water. 

‘Were you kissing me?’ are the first words out of the boy’s mouth. Derek lets go of him like he’s been scalded. 

‘ _No_ ’, he says angrily. 

‘You totally were’, the boy says, and Derek briefly wonders why the kid he saved had to be the mouthy one. 

‘ _No_ , I _wasn’t_ ’, he says. ‘I was giving you mouth to mouth. You weren’t breathing.’ 

The kid’s eyes go wide. ‘Really? _Cool_ ’, he says. ‘And you know they call mouth to mouth ‘the kiss of life’, right?’ 

Derek is about to tell the boy that he can get thrown back in the sea if he _really_ wants, when a call of, ‘Derek!’ splits the air. 

‘That’s your name?’ the boy asks, eyes golden in the sunlight. He smells faintly like grass. 

Derek casts a look at him. ‘I have to go’, he says. ‘Will you be ok?’ 

The boy nods. ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine.’ 

Derek nods back at him. ‘Ok’, he says. Then he takes off at a run in the direction of Laura’s voice. He doesn’t look back. 

* * *

Stiles is sixteen. Stiles is sixteen and he’s standing behind a werewolf, watching some freaky kind of lizard _thing_ stalking them. It would be pretty accurate to say that his life is not exactly run of the mill. He’s sixteen, seventeen in six months or so, but all he wants to be right now is _normal_. He wants to be sitting on the bench waiting for Coach Finstock to call his name – for it to _finally_ be his turn to play. 

Then Derek is telling him to run and the lizard swipes the back of the older boy’s neck. Stiles wonders why he thinks of Derek as a boy, when by all accounts Derek should be a man. And then he’s cursing his overly-active brain and slinging his arm around Derek as they stumble away, _away_ from the lizard-thing and sharply-clawed death. 

Moments pass in a blur after that, Stiles’ phone falling in slow motion and Derek falling too. There are long heartbeats before Stiles makes his choice – if it was ever really a choice in the first place – diving into the pool, swimming down, down, down and wrapping Derek’s arm around his shoulders before kicking up towards the surface. They’re both spluttering and gasping, but they’re also both alive. And best of all, the _thing_ doesn’t seem to like water. So maybe they won’t die a painful, claw-filled death. 

Of course, they might just drown. Stiles finds this more than a little ironic, for a number of reasons. 

_Of course you’d fail where he succeeded_ , the insidious, self-loathing part of his brain whispers. _You’re just a weak little human. You never stood a chance_. 

Stiles pushes the thoughts away _hard_ , utterly refusing to give in. It’s true that drowning has always been a fear since that incident when he was six, but he’s not scared of water – he made sure of that – and he’s _not_ going to just break down. He’s not going to let the panic overtake him, not here, not now. He’s going to fight until there’s no breath in his body and no strength left in his limbs. Derek deserves that, if nothing else. 

There are one or two moments when he nearly gives in though. The first is Derek’s little speech about trust, which cuts Stiles deeper than it should. _He doesn’t even know_ , Stiles realises, heart sinking. The second is after the desperate dash for his phone, the water pushing against him and making him _so slow_. Scott doesn’t pick up and Stiles feels ice running through his veins, Derek’s arm round his shoulder weighing like lead. 

And the minutes pass, trickling into hours as Derek’s body gets heavier and heavier. Exhaustion begins to lace its way through Stiles’ body, creeping fingers stretching up his arms and legs. In the back of his mind, the whisper starts up again, dark and oh so destructive. The first stirrings of panic start fluttering in his stomach and for all that he doesn’t want to give up, he’s starting to feel like there’s nothing else that he _can_ do. 

The move towards the board is a desperate one – and one that proves to be almost fatal as it turns out. If Scott hadn’t (in a less timely manner than Stiles would have liked) appeared out of nowhere and hauled the pair of them out of the water, Stiles doesn’t know what would have happened. He thinks maybe he’d have been able to push himself just a little longer, but as for Derek… 

He feels cold all the way to his bones. And tired. So very, very tired. 

* * *

‘An abomination’, Stiles says, voice dead-tired and face grave. Derek finds himself nodding; finds himself feeling cold inside. Afraid, almost. None of it makes any sense. 

* * *

Derek appears at Stiles’ window later that night, eyes wild. 

‘Are you ok?’ the Alpha asks. Stiles shrugs. 

‘I’ve been better’, he says honestly. ‘My plans for this evening never included keeping your ass afloat for nearly three hours or almost drowning because apparently a pool is the only safe place when crazy kanima lizard-things are stalking you.’ He frowns. ‘What about you?’ 

‘I’m fine’, Derek snaps. 

Stiles holds up his hands. ‘Chill out, dude! I wasn’t trying to imply that you’re any less macho or whatever. But you were paralysed from the neck down and you almost drowned like, twice. I’m pretty sure asking if you’re ok is allowed, all things considered.’ 

Derek frowns at him. ‘I’m fine’, he says, but it’s softer. He’s silent for a moment, and if it was anyone else, Stiles would think they were gathering their courage. Then he meets Stiles’ eye and asks, ‘Why did you do it? Why did you help me?’ 

Stiles snorts. He can’t help himself. 

Derek turns, clearly about to leave. Stiles stops him with a hand on his sleeve. ‘Please’, he says. ‘Stay. I wasn’t… I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just ironic, that’s all.’ 

‘Ironic? How?’ 

Stiles shrugs again. ‘Take a seat and I’ll explain it to you’, he says. 

Derek does as he’s told, perching on the bed. Stiles takes a breath to compose himself, settling himself more comfortably in his chair. ‘So’, he begins. ‘Do you remember a holiday you took, oh… ten years ago?’ Derek shakes his head. Stiles nods thoughtfully. 

‘Ok’, he says. ‘How about the holiday where you saved a boy from drowning?’ 

Derek’s eyes go wide in shock. ‘How do you know about that?’ he demands. Stiles raises an eyebrow. 

‘How do you think?’ he says. ‘C’mon Derek.’ 

Derek still looks utterly baffled. ‘But… but I don’t recognise your scent’, he says eventually. ‘Why don’t I recognise your scent if that was you?’ 

‘My mom… she had this big thing about me not getting sunburned when I was a kid’, Stiles says. ‘She had this special cream that she made herself – I don’t know what was in it, but I never got burned when she put it on me. Anyway, it smelled really strongly; kind of like grass or something. I used to smell like it for _days_ after she put it on me. And I figure peoples’ scents change over time, right?’ He sighs, suddenly tired. ‘Look, why would I make this up?’ 

‘I don’t know’, Derek tells him. ‘But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t.’ The Alpha’s frown deepens, then smoothes out suddenly. ‘If it really was you, you’ll remember what the first thing you said to me was, after you woke up.’ 

Stiles grins. ‘Easy. I said, “Were you kissing me?” and you backed off like I’d spat in your eye or something. It was hilarious.’ 

‘I didn’t like what you were implying’, Derek says stiffly. Then he sighs, shoulders slumping. ‘So it was you. Is that why you helped me? Because I saved you?’ 

Stiles shrugs. ‘Kind of.’ He stares at his hand for a moment or two, then makes up his mind. ‘Look, the thing is you saved me. You had no idea who I was and you still saved me, even though you were just a kid yourself. And that makes you worth helping.’ He shrugs a shoulder. ‘Yeah, I owed you, but it’s more than that. It’s about the person that you used to be – the person I think you still are, somewhere inside all the leather and the eyebrows and the douchebag attitude. You _care_ , even if you won’t admit it. You looked out for Scott and now you’re looking out for a bunch of kids who can’t look out for themselves. Admittedly you're doing a pretty half-assed job of it, but you _are_ doing it. Like I said, that makes you worth helping; worth saving even.’ He bites his lip. ‘Worth trusting.’ 

Derek stares at him. Then he stares some more. 

Then he gets up and leaves without a word. 

* * *

It’s too much. First the knowledge that the unknown boy he saved a decade ago is Stiles Stilinski; has been right on his doorstep for _years_ without Derek even knowing that he’s there. Then the way Stiles spoke about him – like he was something worth looking out for. Something good. Stiles’ words rattle around in his brain, so loud that he feels like he can’t hear anything else. 

He dumps his clothes in a hollow tree stump he’s known about since as long as he can remember. Then he shifts and runs, runs, runs through the woods until he’s miles away and all he can hear is the beat of his own blood in his veins and the skittering hearts of prey. He takes down a deer and feasts on its flesh, letting the savage joy of a clean kill flood him. It’s hours before he returns to the cold, dank place that he calls home. The words are a little less loud now. 

They stay with him though, threading their way through his thoughts and sneaking into his dreams. He sleeps with the sound of the ocean ringing in his ears, waves dashing against his skin. There’s salt in the air and a small boy with pale skin that smells like grass. 

‘Will you be ok?’ Derek asks him. 

The boy nods. ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine’, he says, eyes glinting gold in the sunlight. Then his face shifts, and it’s the Stiles that Derek knows now. ‘But will you?’ 

Derek wakes to the sound of waves. He goes outside and it’s raining, water splattering against the ground, clean and fresh. The smell of salt is gone, but somehow, the lingering scent of grass remains. He turns his face into the rain and remembers how it felt in the sea, cold knifing through his flesh into his very bones. 

‘ _But will you_?’ the voice in his head asks. 

‘I don’t know’, he whispers. ‘I don’t know.’ 

* * *

They don’t speak about it. Not about the time in the pool, or about Derek’s visit that night. Stiles tries not to let it hurt him. 

Instead, he watches Derek try and fail. Watches the bodies fall and his world crumbling into ashes. Watches Matt nearly kill Stiles’ father right in front of him. Watches, because that’s all that he can do, paralysed and pathetic as he is. 

Once it’s all over – once the night has finally come to an end – he goes to bed and tries not to think about how he and Derek had almost had an actual conversation earlier. Then he falls asleep, sick to death of everything. 

When he wakes, he knows exactly what he wants to do. 

* * *

‘Stiles is missing’, Scott tells him, looking wild-eyed and worried. ‘His dad hasn’t seen him since last night and his jeep is gone.’ 

‘And you’re sure he’s not in town?’ 

‘I’ve looked _everywhere_ ’, Scott says. ‘I even tried to scent him out, but the trail… I can’t scent him when he’s in the jeep.’ 

‘What about his phone?’ Derek asks. ‘Can’t the Sheriff track it?’ 

Scott shakes his head. ‘It’s switched off, and so is the GPS.’ He takes a shaky breath. ‘Look, can you help or not? I’m just… I’m really worried, ok? Stiles doesn’t do this.’ 

‘Why should I?’ Derek says, because the anger at Scott’s betrayal is sharp in his chest, but also because he’s genuinely curious. 

‘Because I’m in your pack and I’m asking you to’, Scott says. ‘And because I know Stiles believes in you, no matter what he says.’ He shrugs. ‘That’s got to mean something, right?’ 

“- _that makes you worth helping; worth saving even_.” Stiles’ words flicker in the back of his mind. The hairs on the back of Derek’s neck prickle. 

‘Ok. I’ll help you find him.’ 

* * *

The bay looks exactly how Stiles remembers it. He steps out of his jeep, shaking the stiffness of three hours’ drive from his limbs, his feet sinking into the sand. For a minute or two, he just stands there, breathing in the sea air. Then he locks up the jeep and heads off down the footpath. 

* * *

Derek refuses to let Scott come with him for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s just a hunch and if he’s wrong, he doesn’t want to have taken Scott away from the search for nothing. Secondly, because it’s personal. He doesn’t even tell Scott where he’s going, just gets in the Camaro and drives, his memory guiding him along roads that he remembers from year after year driving along with his family. 

It’s a few hours before he gets there, and the sky is bright, despite the covering of clouds. He parks up next to Stiles’ jeep. Ignores the tug of relief in his chest. Gets out and heads down the footpath that all the normal holiday makers use – the one that he was never anywhere near, because his family was always in the woods, away from everyone else. When he reaches the beach it takes a minute to orient himself, but then he’s off again, pushing against the soft sand as he walks. 

He doesn’t see a single person as he walks, although he supposes it’s not yet the season for it. He’s strangely grateful. It would feel wrong to have to share this place with others, especially when his memories – this memory in particular – are spent alone. 

It takes him a little over half an hour to walk to the rocks, the sea washing against the shore and the gulls screaming as they soar through the air. He feels like he’s stepped back into the past; like he’s moving in a bubble of time that is out of synch with the world around him. There’s salt in the air and pungent seaweed too, and he almost thanks God that the sun isn’t out, because somehow that would just be too much. 

He passes the spot where he’d broken out of the trees all those years ago, sprinting across the sand towards a cry heard on the wind. He closes his eyes, and just for a second he can hear his heart thudding in his chest, pulse beating hard in his veins. He opens his eyes again. Takes a breath. Walks on. 

Stiles is out on the rocks, sitting at the very place where Derek dived into the water once upon a time. He’s looking out to the sea and doesn’t seem to notice Derek, even when he crosses the rocks – a journey that’s oh so easy now, in stark contrast to how it was back then. 

‘I don’t remember it’, Stiles says as Derek draws to a halt behind him. ‘Almost drowning, I mean.’ He glances over his shoulder at Derek. ‘I remember being washed off the rock and I remember being scared to death, but I don’t remember anything else until I woke up.’ 

‘That’s probably a good thing’, Derek says. Stiles nods, looking back out to sea. 

‘Yeah, probably. Sometimes I wonder about it though. I wonder what it would feel like to really drown.’ He laughs, bitterly. ‘Maybe I should have asked Matt.’ 

‘I know what it feels like’, Derek blurts out. Stiles shoots him a look. 

‘Yeah, I guess you do’, he says slowly. ‘But you don’t have to, you know that right?’ 

‘I don’t see how anything’s going to change.’ 

Stiles stands up, turning to face Derek. He sounds totally matter-of-fact as he says, ‘That’s because you’re still sinking.’ 

‘So how do I stop?’ Derek asks him, well aware that this is thin ice here – too close to vulnerability, to weakness – but so desperate to find a way out that he’s willing to take that risk. 

‘You try to swim’, Stiles tells him. ‘You fight with everything you’ve got. And when you can’t fight anymore… then you ask for help.’ 

Silence falls for a moment or two. Then, ‘You said I was worth helping once’, Derek says tentatively. 

Stiles nods. ‘I did’, he says, meeting Derek’s eye. His voice gets a little softer. ‘I still believe that you are.’ And his eyes are gold, just like Derek remembers, but his mouth has changed – wider, fuller, lips pressing against Derek’s own this time, closing the distance between them. 

The waves crash against the rocks and the spray dampens their legs. The wind carries the cry of gulls as they cut through salty air that stings at the skin. Stiles’ mouth moves against his own, sweet and insistent. Finally, Derek feels like he can breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> I know the medical stuff with Derek/Stiles is RUBBISH but it's meant to be that way - Derek is twelve and kind of dumb. And artistic license WOOHOO!


End file.
